Sunitha Kondur & Bijoy Ramachandran

Name

Sunitha Kondur & Bijoy Ramachandran

Company Name

Hundredhands

They call their approach pragmatic, prudent and commonsensical. They work with local materials and skills. They are sensitive and responsive to site conditions. But call their work sustainable, green —  or anything — and they state, “We are always thinking of an all-inclusive practice – an architecture without adjectives.” And inclusiveness, teamwork, collaborations… is just what the name of the practice Hundredhands, which Bijoy Ramachandran and Sunitha Kondur run, connotes. Their work is at the antipodal end of popular imagery of a global aesthetic – which is out of place in a tropical country like India. “Design is about reducing cost; it’s being clever with what’s available… doing what is appropriate. A lot of us think that being an architect calls for being wilful,” lament the Master’s degree-holders from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Their subservience to what exists in terms of systems, climate and conditions, is manifest in their design for iHub at the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bengaluru, “a steel incubation facility [that] delicately manoeuvres around existing trees on the lush IISc campus,” reveal the architects. Through their work, the duo are trying to engage with sophisticated craftspersons and specialised fabricators, to reinvent mechanical systems to address building techniques and sustainability issues, and to look at buildings beyond building systems and in terms of principles.